Thursday, July 3, 2014

Home Of The Brave: Caleb by Nathan Scott

'We were shooting at a friends apartment who was also a photographer and he pulled these wings out of the closet. Caleb looked at me and was like are you serious... I did not think it was going to work or look good at all. We found a belt and tied the wings to them.'

'I felt that we needed to masculine him up as much as we could, so the small leather straps were actually pulled off of my make-up artists purse and we tied them around him. We had a PA sitting behind Caleb right by his buttwith a fan blowing the wings up. And it took two people to grab the wings off camera and then throw them towards the fan just as the strobes went off. It was a mess. But it ended up working great.'

Since first discovering his work in May, I have immersed myself in the creatively charged imagery of photographer Nathan Scott. Nathan generously shared a few of his shoots, and like the one above, the stories that led to their creation. I loved hearing how Fleet Weekwas inspired by chance, with the choosing of a prop, and how the story of Caleb's wings awkwardly, but eventually took flight.

The conception for these images began when Nathan was looking for new models to shoot for Blue Collar Underwear. Caleb was a fraternity boy at the same school Nathan had gone to and they connected through a mutual friend. Nathan went into the shoot knowing he was shooting for the underwear line, but at the back of his head was the July launch of his new magazine Pastiche. With Pastiche launching this week, seemed a great time to feature Nathan's images of Caleb.

'It was his first time in front of the camera and he was a little nervous, but he totally went for it. Caleb let me shoot whatever I wanted and was a great sport!'

Nathan remembered an image, one he wanted to create from a famous photographer. That image was where the uniform came in. With the the theme of Pastiche's first issues being Stars & Stripes: Red White And Blue, it seemed a perfect time to blend the two ideas. With Caleb's lean body, Nathan's idea was to create a hunter/warrior theme using the helmet and combat knife he had brought. The Fourth of July has become in some ways a holiday of heroes, a celebration of the freedoms the country enjoys, and the bigger than life men and women who fought to secure them.

The reality of course is those who fight for our freedoms are as human, flawed and wonderfully normal as the rest of us. But, when the stakes are high, and the chips are down they find the strength and power to exude a stamina and bravery the rest of us must admire and respect. There is a kind of magnetism that draws us in to this type of force, especially on the 4th. It is this strength Nathan strived to bring out in Caleb and I think he rose to the challenge. I think interestingly enough, the shots with Caleb in the wings demonstrate it most to me. There is an erotic warrior feel to them that exemplify the beauty of confidence and strength.

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